Accept No Imitations
by Queen of the Castle
Summary: In which the TARDIS airlock nearly gets a well-deserved workout. Rose/Adam, Nine/Rose.


She likely doesn't realise that the Doctor can smell _him _on her just as clearly as he catches the waft of her perfume. She probably doesn't even know that he'd care. At least he hopes she doesn't. He'd hate to think that she might be torturing him this way on purpose, not that he doesn't deserve it for so many reasons.

Things between Rose and the boy clearly haven't gone very far, luckily, but he thinks it's probably more because the Doctor hasn't given them time for more than a quick tour of the main areas in the TARDIS and a change of clothes than for lack of trying on the boy's part.

The idea of them getting dressed together right there in _his_ wardrobe room, of the boy seeing Rose naked when _he's _never even come close to that, makes the Doctor's hand clench reflexively.

It's bad enough that the Doctor can tell that that idiot Adam kid has had Rose pressed up against one of the walls, aligned from knee to chest. The Doctor can see in his mind's eye the subtle thrust of the boy's groin against the hollow of her hip. He can follow the track of the boy's touch like a lighted path, right down to the slightly too-firm grasp of his fingers on her wrists. Sometimes the Doctor curses his senses, which are so much more sophisticated than any human's. It wouldn't take a Time Lord, though, to see how the boy has carded his fingers through Rose's hair and left it tellingly mussed up.

All of that he could deal with. Really he could. But the boy's also left the telltale scent of his arousal on her like a mark of possession. The Doctor can tell she's been similarly affected, though the tang of her isn't as heavy in the air.

He honestly wants to throw the boy out unprotected into the Time Vortex in just the same almost single-minded way that he'd wanted that Dalek _dead_. Also much the same as with the Dalek, Rose is the only thing that makes him pause. He gets as far as weighing up (to the exact percentage) the likelihood that such an action would make Rose leave him. Then Rose interrupts his train of thought by asking him to take them somewhere. Somewhere _impressive_, she adds in a low, coaxing voice, as if he's ever taken her anywhere dull, or ever would. There's nothing different about this time.

Nothing except the fact that she's treating it like a first date, he realises. If Time Lords didn't have superior physiology that prevented it, he thinks he'd be sick.

Instead, he simply tells her in a dark voice that she might want to fix her smudged lipstick if she plans to step out and explore. He stops himself short of telling her it makes her look like a cheap prostitute, because he knows it's not her he's angry at so much as himself, and he's not really in the mood to earn himself a hard slap. She wipes away the evidence, even going so far as to also tie her hair back so it doesn't look like she's climbed straight out of bed (thank Rassilon for that, he thinks), but she doesn't turn away or blush. She's not that easily shamed. And, after all, she's done nothing wrong (or so the Doctor unsuccessfully tries to remind himself). He knows, intellectually at least, that he has no claim on her. The Doctor thinks to remind her about Mickey, who might have such a claim (it's hard to tell with those two), but the thought of _him _on top of this latest pretty boy just makes the Doctor even more riled up.

He pushes back those feelings and gives her a smile instead. He's apparently completely successful at hiding his real feelings, since she doesn't seem to have a clue that he's even slightly bothered by any of this.

He tells himself that it's a good thing. It's necessary.

The boy insinuates himself up against Rose's side, pressed close to her in something of a mirror of how the Doctor _knows _the two of them stood earlier. He's absurdly glad when Rose ducks away from Adam as the TARDIS shakes to a halt so that she can acquaint herself with what's outside before the boy emerges. He doesn't even care that she's only doing it to impress her new boyfriend, as long as they're not plastered all over each other anymore.

The Doctor resists the urge to 'accidentally' step on the boy (preferably right on his pretty face) after he's fainted. He only manages that because he's heartened by seeing the unimpressed look on Rose's face. Rose herself had been slightly overwhelmed at first by being dunked headfirst into a veritable crowd of aliens and the end of her own planet, sure, but that had been understandable (and intended, the Doctor had to admit). To pass out just at the distant sight of Earth from space, though? Pathetic. Even humans from almost half a century before his own time had managed to get up into the sky and see that without the Doctor having to help them (not much, at least). He's glad she can see that Adam's nothing special after all. It makes it easier to treat her connection to this new boy of hers like a joke rather than the threat that he worries it is.

He's even happier, despite the trouble it heaps onto them, that the idiot manages to prove ten times over just how much of an idiot he actually is. This way he doesn't need to drop the boy off in the vacuum of space and treat it like a TARDIS malfunction. The Doctor can leave him right in his own home, and Rose won't argue that it's not justified.

"I'm sorry about Adam," she says when it's just the two of them again (just how he likes it). "I thought... I knew he was big-headed, but I figured after he saw what's really out there, and figured out that he doesn't know everythin', that underneath he'd be... I dunno. Somethin' about him just reminded me of you."

You don't need a cheap imitation, he tells her silently. I'm right _here_.

He can't bring himself to say it, and she just doesn't _see_it on her own.

Instead, she looks up at him with those big eyes she uses sometimes when she thinks he's actually done something right (that look that never fails to make him melt). "Thanks for what you said. You could've easily blamed me for him screwin' up. I was the one who wanted him on board."

"He made his own choices. And you _are_the best," the Doctor insists.

She smiles at him, her tongue peeking out, and he knows in that moment that she's absolutely worth all of the jealousy and unsatisfied longing that she's constantly putting him through.

Still, he subtly (_he _thinks it's subtle, at least) requests that she shower before they head back out into the universe. There's no need for there to be a constant reminder that she's let someone other than him touch her today, and that it'll likely happen again.

~FIN~


End file.
